


with the touch of your hand

by Murf1307



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Developing Relationship, Historically Accurate Homophobic Language, M/M, POV Character of Color, Soulmate-Identifying Touch, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 22:14:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11495814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Murf1307/pseuds/Murf1307
Summary: Armando has a feeling he knows who his soulmate is.  But in the world they live in, it's just not that simple.





	with the touch of your hand

The thing about it, Armando thinks, is that part of him probably always knew. He didn't even need to touch Alex Summers to know he was important, that he mattered.

The two of them, they have a certain sort of _gravity_ from the get-go, and Armando doesn't know what to do with it, but he'll run with it as far as he's allowed. He doesn't try to touch Alex, either, though, because he's of the opinion that if it's meant to be, it'll happen.

He just, y'know, gives it plenty of chances to.

Leans in a little too close by the pinball machine, brushes past him in hallways -- never skin-to-skin, because part of him doesn't even _want_ to know.

The world isn't kind to soulmates that the world doesn't believe in, after all. His parents weren't soulmates, but he's met a few sets as a cabbie. Like the two girls who tangled their hands together in the back of his cab once a week, every week, on Saturday night.

One night, they didn't show up, and the next Sunday morning, one of them hailed his cab all dressed in black, with a dark bruise down the left side of her pale little face.

If his instincts are right -- and his instincts always are -- he can't do this to Alex. Alex has seen enough: he has that look in his eyes, like he's seen some of the worst the world has to offer and lived through it.

(Angel and Lehnsherr have eyes like that, too, he thinks.)

But god, he wishes the world was gentler, that he could dare to do this, dare to reach out and touch the boy who orbits around him like a bright comet cutting through the night. He knows that if he does reach out and touch that comet, if he pushes that orbit ever so slightly, though, the impact crater will devastate them both.

Tonight, they're at the pinball machine, and Armando, as usual, is over-aware of his hands, of the exposed skin of Alex's hands, wrists, throat, face. He keeps his own hands close but not touching, never that.

He wonders if Alex has noticed, but if he has, he's given no sign.

Alex is caught up in the game, and Armando decides to go grab a coke from the coffee table and come back in just a minute. He turns.

Alex's hand darts out, and curls around his wrist, an absent movement meant to keep Armando there beside him. It's a guileless movement, because Alex clearly isn't thinking. He just moves, his brain focused on the game.

They're both utterly distracted, though, by the flash of _knowing_ that shudders through them. It's unavoidable, the moment of realization, of belonging.

Alex's eyes whip up to meet Armando's, and there's fear and destiny in his blue eyes.

Armando takes a breath, and then another.

Alex lets go, and turns back to the game. Armando goes and gets his coke.

When he gets back to the machine, Alex is gone.

 

* * *

 

He finds Alex, and it's easy, because of the whole soulmate thing, and God, Armando feels shitty about using that connection when Alex so clearly isn't into it, but he needs to find him.

Alex is out in the woods behind the compound, where an old obstacle course for CIA agents-in-traning rots its way back into ruins and ivy and trees. The forest is still, and Alex is sitting on top of a too-rickety platform, a tree branch bracketing it up. He's not looking at the ground, so Armando figures he's at least got the element of surprise still going for him.

"Hey, hotshot!" he calls up to him, the word still sort of new in his mouth -- the nickname's because of his powers, and because Armando likes him.

Armando knows he could fall in love with him, if he let himself, so he's got to be careful.

Alex looks down at him, tenser than a second ago. "What?"

"I know you felt that, back there," he says, moving toward the frayed rope ladder Alex must've used to climb up there. "When you grabbed me."

He needs to know what this is gonna be, because they can't ignore it now: they're meant to be, a soul-deep thing that Armando knows there's no walking away from. If Alex doesn't want it, then Armando'll leave him alone, but Armando admits he doesnt know pretty much anything about Alex yet.

"I'm a fucking fag, okay?"

The words fall out of Alex's mouth like swords from heaven, sharp and hard and hurting. Armando flinches, because fag is a punch to the gut no matter who it comes from.

Armando starts climbing the ladder, but he doesn't say anything. He needs to get the words straightened out in his head before he can say them out loud, before he can figure out what he even wants out of this. What risks he's willing to take.

There's barely enough room for two up here, and Armando just dangles his legs over the side of the platform, his thigh pressed against Alex's.

"I mean," he finally says, after a minute, "Me too, I guess."

Alex swallows. "You sure you're okay with that?"

Armando thinks for a second. "Yeah. I think so. I mean, nothing I can do about it, right?" If it wasn't meant to be he'd've adapted out of it by now, right?

"Yeah," Alex says.

The silence that follows lasts all night.

 

* * *

 

 

Xavier and Lehnsherr bring back the last of them the next day, a stringy-limbed boy with a cloud of red hair. His name's Sean, and he couldn't look more Irish if he tried.

Sean shakes hands with everyone, casually, and that means one of two things: he's already touched his soul mate, or he doesn't think he has one.

Armando takes the offered hand and shakes, because, well, it's rare enough to have a soul mate -- two is pretty much unheard of. And nothing happens, because Sean's meant for someone else.

Good. It's all already complicated enough.

He notes Xavier herding Alex off to the side, and it puts him on guard somehow. He doesn't really trust Xavier -- he means well, but he's lived a different kind of life than most of the rest, and no amount of mind-reading is ever gonna change that.

Alex looks confrontational, but if he and Xavier talk at all, it's in their heads. Armando lingers as the others disperse, Raven taking Sean to go meet Hank -- _He's kind of a dork_ , she tells him, _but he's beautiful._

When Xavier finally goes, that leaves just the two of them alone in the rec room, Armando's hands in his pockets like an offer of distance.

Alex meets his eyes, then looks away.

He leaves Armando alone.

 

* * *

 

"Man, you are _killing_ me," Armando says, two nights after Sean arrives. Alex isn't really paying him any attention, but after the little party they all had last night, things seem a little less tense.

Just a little.

And only until something starts making noise outside.

Armando puts his hand on Alex's chest to move him on instinct, and that's where the two of them wind up, working off instinct.

Every time Alex touches him, it feels as though it's meant to be, that they're meant to fight side by side, and Armando would be thinking about that if there wasn't an existential threat right outside. For now, though, he just trusts the instincts and expects Alex to know what a touch or a glance means.

When Shaw makes his sales pitch -- because for all Shaw's trying to be a revolutionary, he just doesn't have that charisma, his hair slicked back like that and his eyes glittering like beetles as he looks them all over -- Armando can tell he's passing most attention to him and Angel, and that just makes him angrier. Sure, try to split the team in two if you want, he thinks, but he's not about to sit back and let Shaw make _assumptions_ based on his and Angel's blackness.

Angel gets taken in, though, and that just makes this more complicated.

"We have to do something," Raven says, and her voice is almost plaintive, and Armando forces himself to think past the rage.

He takes a deep breath, and turns to his soulmate.


End file.
